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Spotlight

The Fate of Wind Energy in Arkansas Is on Eagles’ Wings

The Nimbus wind project in the Ozark Mountains is moving forward even without species permits, while locals pray Trump will shut it down.

An eagle, wind power, and Arkansas.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

The state of Arkansas is quickly becoming an important bellwether for the future of renewable energy deployment in the U.S., and a single project in the state’s famed Ozark Mountains might be the big fight that decides which way the state’s winds blow.

Arkansas has not historically been a renewables-heavy state, and very little power there is generated from solar or wind today. But after passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, the state saw a surge in project development, with more than 1.5 gigawatts of mostly utility-scale solar proposed in 2024, according to industry data. The state also welcomed its first large wind farm that year.

As in other states – Oklahoma and Arizona, for example – this spike in development led to a fresh wave of opposition and grassroots organizing against development. At least six Arkansas counties currently have active moratoria on solar or wind development, according to Heatmap Pro data. Unlike other states, Arkansas has actually gone there this year by passing a law restricting wind development and requiring all projects to have minimum setbacks on wind turbines from neighboring property owners of at least 3.5-times the height of the wind turbine itself, which can be as far as a quarter of a mile.

But activists on the ground still want more. Specifically, they want to stop Scout Clean Energy’s Nimbus wind project, which appears to have evaded significant barriers from either the new state law or a local ordinance blocking future wind development in Carroll County, the project’s future home. This facility is genuinely disliked by many on the ground in Carroll County; for weeks now, I have been monitoring residents posting to Facebook with updates on the movements of wind turbine components and their impacts to traffic. I’ve also seen the grumbling about it travel from the mouths of residents living near the project site to conservative social media influencers and influential figures in conservative energy policy circles.

The Nimbus project is also at considerable risk of federal intervention in some fashion. As I wrote about a few weeks ago, Nimbus applied to the Fish and Wildlife Service for incidental take approval covering golden eagles and endangered bats throughout the course of its operation. This turned into a multi-year effort to craft a conservation plan in tandem with permitting applications that are all pending approval from federal officials.

Scout Clean Energy still had not received permission by the time FWS changed hands to Trump 2.0, though – putting not only its permit but the project itself in potential legal risk. In addition, activists have recently seized upon risks floated by the Defense Department during development around the potential for the turbines to negatively impact radar capabilities, which previously resulted in the developer planning towers of varying heights for the blades.

These risks aren’t unique to Nimbus. Some of this is a reflection of how wind projects are generally so large and impactful that they wind up eventually landing in a federal nexus. But in this particular case, the fact that it seemed nothing could halt this project made me wonder if Trump was on the minds of people in Carroll County, too.

That’s how I wound up on the phone with Caroline Rogers, a woman living on Bradshaw Mountain near the Nimbus project site, who told me she has been fighting it since she first learned about it in 2023. Rogers and I chatted for almost an hour and, candidly, I found her to be an incredibly nice individual. When I asked her why she’s against the wind farm, she brought up a bunch of reasons I couldn’t necessarily fault her for, like concerns about property values and a lack of local civil services to support the community if there were a turbine failure or fire at the site.

“I still pray every day,” she told me when I asked her about whether she wants an outside force – à la Trump – to come in and do something to stop the facility. “There have been projects that have been stopped for various reasons, and there have been turbines that have been taken down.”

One of the things Rogers hopes happens is that the Fish and Wildlife Service’s bird crackdown comes for the Nimbus project, which is under construction even as it’s unclear whether it’ll ever get the take permits under the Trump administration. “Maybe it can be more of an enforcement [action],” she told me. “I hope it happens.”

This is where Trump’s unprecedented approach to energy development – and the curtailment of it – would have to cross a new rubicon. The Fish and Wildlife Service has rarely exercised its bird protection enforcement abilities against wind projects because of a significant and recent backlog in the permitting process related to applications from the sector. Bill Eubanks, an environmental attorney who works on renewables conflicts, told me earlier this week that if a developer is told by the agency it needs a permit, then “they’re on notice if they kill an eagle.” But while enforcement powers have been used before, it is “not that common.”

Even Rogers knows intervention from federal species regulators would be a potentially unprecedented step. “It can never stop a project that I’ve seen,” she told me.

Yet if Trump were to empower FWS to go after wind projects for violating species statutes, it is precisely this backlog that would make projects like Nimbus a potential target.

“They got so many applications from developers, and each one takes so much staff time to finalize,” Eubanks told me. “Even before January 20, there was already a significant backlog.”

Scout Clean Energy did not respond to requests for comment. If I hear from them or the Fish and Wildlife Service, I will let you know.

Yellow

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Hotspots

Offshore Wind Bluster Hits New England


And more on the week’s most important conflicts around renewable energy projects.

The United States.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

1. Newport County, Rhode Island – The Trump administration escalated its onslaught against the offshore wind sector in the past week … coincidentally (or not) right after a New England-based anti-wind organization requested that it do so.

  • Over the Labor Day weekend, the Trump administration stated in a court filing that it planned to potentially redo the record of decision for Orsted’s SouthCoast wind project off the coast of Massachusetts, and yesterday, Justice Department officials said they would vacate the approval of Avangrid’s construction and operations plan for its New England 1 offshore project.
  • These announcements got a lot of media attention. Less focus was bestowed on what preceded these moves: Last week, the anti-wind organization Green Oceans partnered with four tribes native to the Northeast and together sent petitions to the Interior and Transportation Departments, as well as the Defense Department, calling for the “immediate suspension” of offshore wind in the region.
  • According to a press release, the petitions asked for projects under construction to stop work as well as called for an end to the operation of South Fork, a completed and operating wind farm off the coast of New York. The petitions rely largely on a national security rationale that mirrors the administration’s reasoning for halting work on Orsted’s Revolution Wind offshore project. (Orsted sued over that move today, by the way.)
  • We cannot say at the moment how much this specific maneuver mattered to an administration already hostile to offshore wind. But there’s reason to believe Green Oceans is an influential organization within Trump administration circles. Early this year I reported on a roadmap created by a constellation of opposition groups, including the head of Green Oceans, and submitted to the Trump transition team showing how the incoming administration could block offshore wind development. Several of the turns in that roadmap have ultimately come to pass.
  • We also now know that Green Oceans has been in direct contact with Trump officials about individual offshore wind projects. Last week, E&E News published internal emails that showed the organization obtained a meeting in May with senior Interior Department officials to discuss cancelling all current offshore wind leases held by developers.
  • At this juncture, it’s genuinely impossible to know how far Trump will go. But now we know the opposition to offshore wind is going for the Full Monty: shutting down operating projects on a national security justification.

2. Madison County, New York – Officials in this county are using a novel method to target a wind project: They’re claiming it’ll disrupt 911 calls.

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Q&A

How Renewable Projects Can Be a Political Win-Win

Chatting party polarization with League of Conservation Voters CEO Pete Maysmith.

The CEO of the League of Conservation Voters.
Heatmap Illustration

For this week’s conversation I chatted with Pete Maysmith, CEO of the League of Conservation Voters. There’s no one I’d rather talk to at a moment when any conflict over a solar farm can turn into the equivalent of a heated political campaign. I wanted to know how LCV is approaching the way renewables are becoming more partisan and the insurgent rise of local opposition to project development. Thankfully, Maysmith was willing to take some time right before the Labor Day weekend to sit in my hot seat.

The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.

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Spotlight

Birds Could Be the Anti-Wind Trump Card

How the Migratory Bird Treaty Act could become the administration’s ultimate weapon against wind farms.

A golden eagle and wind turbines.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

The Trump administration has quietly opened the door to strictly enforcing a migratory bird protection law in a way that could cast a legal cloud over wind farms across the country.

As I’ve chronicled for Heatmap, the Interior Department over the past month expanded its ongoing investigation of the wind industry’s wildlife impacts to go after turbines for killing imperiled bald and golden eagles, sending voluminous records requests to developers. We’ve discussed here how avian conservation activists and even some former government wildlife staff are reporting spikes in golden eagle mortality in areas with operating wind projects. Whether these eagle deaths were allowable under the law – the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act – is going to wind up being a question for regulators and courts if Interior progresses further against specific facilities. Irrespective of what one thinks about the merits of wind energy, it’s extremely likely that a federal government already hostile to wind power will use the law to apply even more pressure on developers.

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